COCAPULT - Pelt coconuts at sea-life from a bendy palm tree.

Sailing across the glittering expanse, your ship is dragged to the depths by a writhing mass of tentacles.

You paddle to shore and surrounded by the local inhabitants, a single palm tree heavy with coconuts sways in the wind.

COCAPULT is an arcade platformer in which you pelt a relentless tide of jellyfish and other wildlife with coconuts.

Plenty of Fish in the Sea: A variety of different enemy types from air and sea to tackle!

Gifts from the deep: Drag floating crates back to shore and unleash coconut powerups!

Every Coconut Counts: Bouncing coconuts off multiple enemies will make your ammo go further and bag you more points!

I've currently been working on this project for just over a week and have been making some solid progress so far! My aim is to get it submitted to Apple by the end of April and make this a significantly quicker turnaround in comparison to my previous project, Corporate Salmon.

So one of the side things I'm wanting to do with this project is to design it so it can be played at conferences in an installation format. One of the parts of this was designing a custom controller, which I've begun the process of with a neat little cardboard gamepad! I can assure you the wires on the back are looking a lot less messy (replaced with regular colour coded wiring and heat shrunk into an individual sleeve). I'll likely be documenting the development of this component in this thread as well. My endgame would be a coin-operated cabinet I can host in local pubs and take to various festivals and events.

I had the opportunity to show the game for the first time at the CambridgeGameDev earlier in the week. I took along a copy of the game on tablet and one with a custom controller and here's what I found out from the attendees (Here's a Tweet from the event!): - There needs to be more incentive to fetch crates/powerups from the ocean (Potentially a clearer trajectory line/bonus points for collecting?)- I need to increase the sizes of buttons on mobile (Folks were struggling on TABLET to push the buttons, would be even worse on phones)- Buttons that link to storefronts/rating the game have the wrong input function (If touch is held down rather than when pressed) so when touched it opens 10+ tabs in the browser and crashes the game! Is a quick fix but worth mentioning.- Suggestion for a day/night cycle? This one I might consider but might be quite difficult abiding by the colour palette I've chosen (A LOT of vibrant colours).- Increasing the collision boxes of the jellyfish (Some shots that looked like they should've hit didn't)- Close range shots are hard to pull off (May have to look at slowing down the player movement further in the centre?)- Not clear to some players what the crate powerup in the ocean did (Many not risking to venture out/trying to hit it with the coconuts)- The initial concept for an enemy type rejected from gauging the audience, suggestions to avoid muddying the mechanics. - Mixed response on the question of a trajectory angle, one person suggested having a curved line based on the angle, but have it fade out before it reaches the water (No idea how on earth I'll figure that one out but I'll give it a go!)

The reception of the game was positive and as well the early tutorial seems to have done the trick, I didn't have to explain the controls to anyone and most people picked it up. Is worth noting this was with games developers so may not be representative of more casual audiences.

I'll be working through these and adding them to my list of to do's over the next week, my intention is to get a build ready for GDC to randomly show at events. Since I'm only expecting a very short turnaround on this project, it's not worth approaching publishers about the project but any press I can get is always good!

So one of the side things I'm wanting to do with this project is to design it so it can be played at conferences in an installation format. One of the parts of this was designing a custom controller, which I've begun the process of with a neat little cardboard gamepad! I can assure you the wires on the back are looking a lot less messy (replaced with regular colour coded wiring and heat shrunk into an individual sleeve). I'll likely be documenting the development of this component in this thread as well. My endgame would be a coin-operated cabinet I can host in local pubs and take to various festivals and events.

Stay tuned for more soon!

This game looks really cool along with the controller! But is this possible to make coin-operated cabinets for Stencyl games? That would be rather interesting to see!

Upcoming ProjectsPoppytail 5 and Pixeltail: Fifth and sixth main instalments in Poppytail series. A Game About Trimming Hedges: Final Version: An updated version of the original AGATH; also canon to the Poppytail series. Easter Fun 2: A sequel to the original Easter Fun. One Million: Last-one-standing style small project; also canon to the Poppytail series.. The Poppytales: Hand-drawn spin-off bullet-hell RPG using characters from all my other book and game projects. Not canon to the Poppytail series.